An industrial gas turbine includes an air inlet, an air compressor section, a combustion section, a turbine section, and an exhaust section. The combustion section includes fuel feeds and air feed that connect to combustion cans, which mixes the fuel and the air and creates combustion that supplies exhaust gas to the turbine section.
Conventionally, the combustion cans include a series of fuel tubes under an endcover in an axial end of a combustion can, a combustion chamber on the opposite axial end of the combustion can, and a variety of configurations of mixing nozzles that mixes fuel with air prior to reaching the combustion chamber. The mixing nozzles may also be micromixer configurations using the standard endcover and fuel nozzle setup to feed fuel to the micromixer tubes. The current micromixer configuration restricts the flexibility of the micromixer configuration by limiting the shape of the micromixer assembly to conform to the rounded shape of the combustion can that is tied to the fuel nozzle sector geometry and the designated fuel entry points. The current configurations also poses mechanical challenges of connecting the endcover and fuel nozzle feed to the mixing nozzles and/or micromixer assemblies inside the combustion can.
Simplification and control of the fuel tubes and mixing nozzles configurations have been in constant need of development. The improvements are sought in order to improve control of the amount of fuel used during combustion, and to improve control of the amount of combustion that is produced during operation. The simplification of the fuel input also allows easier connections from the fuel nozzle feed to the mixing nozzles and/or micromixer assemblies inside the combustion can. The simplification may allow the combustion can to be re-shaped to better match the annular sector of the turbine inlet instead of remaining round and tied to fuel nozzle geometry. The flexibility in micromixer configurations may allow further optimization of dynamics and emissions while maintaining traditional effusion cooling of the micromixer cap to limit durability risks. Costs may also be reduced due to the simplification of configurations.